Presentation Instructions

All papers in this year’s RSS will be presented as a short talk and poster. To
find the time of your talk, please see the program. The format of presentations
is the same as the previous years. For example, video recordings from RSS 2014
presented in this format are available
here for your reference.

If you have questions after reading the instructions below, please contact Chris
Amato or Amanda Prorok (Presentation Co-Chairs) for issues regarding short talks
or posters.

Short Talks

Short talks run a maximum of 5 minutes, aided by a pre-prepared video.

Each session will consist of 4-5 paper presentations. First, the 5-minute
presentations will be presented in sequence; no questions will be taken during
this time. Next, there will be a common 5-10-minute question period for all
papers presented in that session. Presenters should be seated on the right side
of the auditorium when facing the stage in the front row at least 10 minutes
before the session starts. Conference personnel will be there to help you get
the lapel microphone on before your talk. All presenters will return to the
stage for the common question and answer session after the last presentation in
the session.

5-Minute Video for Short Talks

You will have a 5-minute slot to give an overview of your paper. You must
provide, in advance, a 300 second MP4 video which will play on the conference
laptop during your short talk. You cannot use your own laptop and you will have
no control over the playback of this video. The session chair will hit “start”,
and you will be coaxed off the stage 5 minutes later!

Please submit your video
here. The submission
website will open on June 1, 2018 and close on June 18th, 2018, (anywhere
on Earth). This is a strict deadline, and
there will be no extension or exception, as we need time to verify video
compatibility, resolve any potential problems, and download to the conference
laptop. If you have not uploaded the video by the deadline, you will still have
your 5-minute slot, but you will not have access to slides or any other
materials that require a projector.

You can prepare your 300 second MP4 file in any manner you want. For example,
you can generate a conventional Powerpoint or Keynote talk and export (if your
software supports it) directly to MP4. Or you can use video-editing software.
Target 1920x1080 or 1440x1080 at 30fps. We do not recommend relying on audio,
since there will be no opportunity to check volume levels. For convenience, we
have developed a website that will convert a PDF file to an MP4 for you
(available from June 1, 2018). This is intended to make it easy for users to
generate a compliant MP4 file with little additional effort. The basic process
is:

Click “Preview” to quickly generate a low-resolution, low frame-rate version
of your talk. This is suitable for practicing your talk (note: the video
won’t play in VLC due to a bug in VLC’s handling of low-frame-rate videos).

Note that the PDF2MP4 website will overlay “progress bars” on each slide,
allowing you to anticipate when the next slide will appear. You can also
insert short videos into your talk, but note that any audio data is
discarded. The RSS organizers believe that the functionality offered by this
site is more than adequate for producing a great talk for RSS. It is
recommended that authors try the site early to understand its capabilities
and decide whether they will use the site or resort to their own video
editing.

If you do not use the PDF2MP4 website, consider adding some sort of visual
cue that will help you anticipate when the next slide will change, e.g., a
red dot that appears five seconds before the next slide. (The PDF2MP4 site
that is provided will add a progress bar to the bottom of each slide
automatically).

If you have a video that you’d like to use that is not in MP4 format, we
recommend using the free software Handbrake to convert it. The “AppleTV3”
preset should work well.

Poster Instructions

In addition to the 5 minute talks all accepted papers will be presenting posters
at afternoon poster sessions.

Poster Format

You will have a total area of 48 in. by 48 in. to mount your poster. We
recommend printing posters to be 36 in. wide by 48 in. tall or using A0 if
metric is easier for you to print. We recommend not using fonts smaller than
24pt on the posters, and titles to be at least size 72pt up to 96pt.

Poster Sessions

Poster sessions will run from 4:30-6:00pm on Tuesday and Wednesday, and
3:00pm-4:15pm on Thursday. Posters will be presented on the same day as their
corresponding spotlight talks.

Multimedia extras

Space constraints at the poster session restrict us from providing tables to sit
laptops on to play videos associated with the work. If you feel videos are
necessary to help your poster presentation we recommend bringing your own
hand-held device to display them, such as a tablet or phone.

Additional Suggestions

The RSS Foundation posted a letter to the RSS community in November of 2013. One
part of this letter contained helpful tips for short talks:

Avoid high-density slides. The point of the slides is not to remind you, the
speaker, of what you wanted to say. Slides are a visual aid for you to
facilitate making an argument. A simple heuristic: only put on your slides
what you would write or draw on a board if you were giving the talk without
slides.

Practice. Almost everyone will benefit from multiple practice sessions (some
of which ideally with an audience). Your goal in practicing is to be
comfortable with what you plan to say on every slide without attempting to
memorize a rigid script.

When time is up, stop. No one wants to cut you off in mid-sentence, but the
schedule does not allow for “grace periods”. Be done when the timer hits
zero, and remember that no one will be upset if your talk ends 30 seconds
early.

Adding to the above, it is critical to remember that RSS is comprised of
researchers from widely different fields. Your talk should make sense to the
full audience, not only the subset in your specialized area.